The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts. (Psalm 103:8-18 NIV)
Happy Father’s Day! Every year when Father’s Day rolls around, I feel I should preach a sermon about being a good father. We see so many bad examples of fatherhood in our world. In our own lives. Today would be the day to talk about “Seven Steps to Being a Good Father.” Or, “Five Things Good Fathers Do Differently.” It would be a perfect day to say, “This is what a Christian father should be like! This is what a Christian father should do!” But I’m not going to preach about that today. First, because not all of you are fathers, and I want all of you to pay attention!
But here’s the bigger reason: I don’t need that. I don’t need to hear seven steps to being a good father. I already know a hundred things I should be doing as a father. You do too. How many of them do we do? Every one of us fathers here today is very aware of our failings as fathers. Being a father brings with it a lot of guilt. All the times you haven’t been there. All the promises you haven’t kept. All the things you’ve said too harshly. All the things you should have said but didn’t. Being a father brings with it a lot of guilt. We fathers don’t need to be told more things to do. We already see all the things we haven’t done! Do you know what we need to hear? What God has done for us. Today on Father’s Day, let’s focus on the one truly good Father: God.
Have you heard what he’s like? Some people think God is an angry father waiting to punish us. Other people think God is an absent father who doesn’t pay attention to us. Have you heard what God is really like? Listen: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” It takes just one verse to convict me of how unlike God I am. I’m the opposite! Quick to anger. Short on love. Not God. Compassion—empathy? He’s got it! Grace—undeserved love? Got it! Slow to anger. Abounding in love—like a waterfall overflowing over and over. This is what God is like: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”
God’s people latched on to these words. For Christians today, what verse of the Bible is most loved? Probably John 3:16, right? “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” We hold tightly to that promise from God. Do you know what verse would have been most loved for the Israelites in the Old Testament? This verse. These words were first spoken by God himself to Moses in the book of Exodus. Then, they are repeated again and again throughout the Old Testament. What is our God like? “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”
That makes us want to ask, “How compassionate? How gracious?” It’s like when your friend comes home from a fishing trip and tells you he caught a big fish. What are you dying to ask? “How big?” We want to ask, “How compassionate, God? How gracious are you?” Listen: “He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” God is this gracious: He does not treat us as our sins deserve. We think that if God is good, he should give us stuff. The truth is, one of the greatest things God does is to not give us stuff. God does not give us what our sins deserve.
So what do our sins deserve? I thought about that this week. I had a terrible toothache for a couple of days. Have you had a toothache before? I was ready to just have all of my teeth removed and eat ice cream for the rest of my life. It hurt bad! But this thought crossed my mind: “I deserve this. I deserve this all the time. Not just for a few days or weeks. My sins deserve so much worse than a toothache.” Isn’t that true? What if God treated us as our sins deserve? He doesn’t. “He does not treat us as our sins deserve.” That’s undeserved love. That’s grace!
How much love does God have for you and me? “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.” So how high are the heavens above the earth? I looked it up. Do you know how far away the closest star is? 25,300,000,000,000 miles. That’s how great God’s love for you is! You could fly as high as possible and still not get to the end of God’s love. In one of my favorite children’s books, a bunny tells his dad that he loves him up to the moon. Do you know what the dad said? “I love you to the moon and back!” That’s Gods love for us!
But what about when I mess up? What about this guilt I carry around? “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” So how far is the east from the west? If you were to dig a hole in our parking lot straight through the center of the earth, do you know where you’d end up? Just for you, I tried it this week… By asking Google. The very opposite side of the world is in the middle of the ocean between Australia and South Africa. Jesus has taken your sins even further away. When Jesus died to remove our sin, he removed it completely. The Lord is not like people who forgive but don’t forget. Your sins are gone!
Because here’s how God feels about you: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.” Remember how the Lord’s Prayer begins? “Our Father in heaven…” God wants us to look at him as dear children look at their dear father. He wants us to trust him like a little boy trusts his dad. He wants to let us know that he loves us more than we love our kids. God never gets tired of forgiving your sins. God never gets tired of loving you. God never gets tired of hearing your voice. Isn’t that great? We have a good Father.
As our Father, God knows exactly what we’re like. God knows exactly how much we need his grace. We can put on a show on the outside. But God can see our deepest needs. “For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” It got pretty dusty this past summer during the drought. There’s a sod farm near our house. By the end of last summer, it was all dust. The wind would blow dust around everywhere. That’s us: Dust. God remembers that we are dust.
Do you know what that means? Everything depends on God. Everything. Do you realize that? I remember holding our oldest son after we got home from the hospital. Looking at him in my arms, I realized something: He can’t do anything. Some of God’s creatures give birth to babies that can do things immediately: Walk. Swim. Eat grass. Right from the start. What are human babies able to do on their own? Nothing. They are completely dependent for years. Do you think God made us that way so that we could understand our relationship with him? It’s all God.
All our lives. It’s not as though we grow up and don’t need God anymore. We might think so. When we think that, we should remember the next verses: “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field. The wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” Even when we are at our very best, we’re like a flower that blooms. How long does that last? Until the wind blows. We recognize that, don’t we? We talk about “our day in the sun.” How long does a “day in the sun” last? A day. Until the wind blows. Then it’s gone. We’re gone.
But God’s love? “But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children.” God’s love never runs out. It never gives up. It is never used up. Could there be a greater contrast between God and us? I am nothing but dust and grass, and I deserve God’s anger and punishment for my sin. But I have a heavenly Father who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve. His love is from everlasting to everlasting. God is the one good Father.
That’s what I need. That’s whom I need: God! How do we get him? How do we—dust and grass—get God as our Father? Imagine a random child ran up to you at the park and said, “Heh, you’re my dad now. I chose you! You get to pay all my bills. You get to take care of me. You get to hear all my complaining. You’re responsible for me now. I just chose you to be my dad.” How would you react? You’d say, “That’s not how it works!” You don’t get to choose your dad. Not even a little bit. It’s completely out of your hands. If someone is going to be your dad, they chose you even before you were born. We didn’t chose God as our Father. We don’t deserve him.
Only Jesus does. If God is the good Father, Jesus is the perfect Son. He did everything right, always, just like his Father! There’s only one person who should be able to call God, “Father.” Jesus! And yet, Jesus is the one who ended up on the cross. And, suddenly, when you see the cross of Jesus, all of this begins to make sense. God does not treat us as our sins deserve, because he put our sins on Jesus instead. The cross of Jesus is the huge proof that God is compassionate and gracious. I know it doesn’t always look that way in life. God’s grace and compassion is hidden behind our pain or our doubt or our heartbreak. But when you think of the cross of Jesus, you can know that no matter what you are facing, God is compassionate and gracious. Always!
It’s only through Jesus that you and I get to call God our Father. The Bible describes it like this: “When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” (Galatians 4:4-5). Through Jesus, God adopted you as his child. In another place, the Bible says, “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). How do we become children of God? By believing in Jesus. God is our good Father by faith. “In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith” (Galatians 3:25).
So today, on Father’s Day, believe it! Believe in your good Father. No matter what you see, believe in God’s promises to you: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love…. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.”
That’s what motivates Christians. That’s what motivates Christian fathers. Not a big list of “to-dos.” The big list of what God has done. Your good Father has freed you from all your sin and guilt through the cross of Jesus. Your good Father has freed you from caring for yourself, because he’s got you covered with his grace and love. You can only be a good father—or mother or sister or brother—by first being the child of God by faith in Jesus. Then, you’re free to be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Just like your good Father.
Upside-Down Savior 